


Captive Voice

by n_a_s_h_i



Category: Jak and Daxter
Genre: Alternate Alternate Title: How NOT to Make a Supersoldier, Alternate Title: Kill Your Best Friend for Pain and Science, Body Horror, Human Experimentation, Implied Character Death, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Pseudoscience, Stockholm Syndrome, Victims of Science
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-14 23:00:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5762212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/n_a_s_h_i/pseuds/n_a_s_h_i
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Displaced from his home in Sandover and separated from his friends, Jak has been captured for use in the Dark Warrior Program. While his progress is impressive, his captors are frustrated by his inability to speak—with some coaxing, Praxis eventually agrees to allow Jak's atrophied vocal muscles to be repaired "in exchange" for his participation in the program. After all, what good is a monster if it can't roar?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Captain of the Guard

**Author's Note:**

> For the uninitiated, this is a hard revision and rework of a fanfic by the same name that originally started posting almost exactly 10 years ago. As such it will have a regular posting schedule of one chapter a week until completion. If you were a reader of the original, think of this as something like a remastered director's cut.

They called him the Baron, which somehow sounded more like a name than a title. He was a giant of a man with greying hair and a harsh expression, made harsher by the metal plating up the side of his face, bolted up the back of one ear to support obviously damaged cartilage. He looked Jak up and down, squinting slightly with his one remaining eye, brow furrowing to a look somewhere between aggravated and confused.

“Don’t you have anything to say?”

He waited a long moment, but the only reply offered was narrowed blue eyes and tightly clenched teeth. Turning away with a sigh, moving with an obvious limp, he stood with his armored back toward his prisoner. “Fine, keep quiet while you can,” he rumbled. “We’ll have you talking soon enough.”

Jak continued to glare as the men in red dragged him away. Unwilling to give them the satisfaction of bodily hauling him wherever they were headed, he started walking on his own; while pulling out of the grip on his arms seemed unlikely, as his barely-bound feet padded on the cold metal steadily he at last took the time to look around properly. A glance right and left to see the faces of his captors found only reflective screens of black staring straight ahead. The hall was dark, lit in low greens and flickering blues, but otherwise unremarkable.

Jak let out a long breath and lowered his eyes, wondering what they could possibly want with him. That Baron character hadn’t said, but Jak had a terrible feeling that went far beyond the ache of the dark bruise on his forehead.

He had fought Gol and Maia with little trepidation—there was the concern that he and Daxter might very well die in the process of destroying the eco-tainted siblings, but as far as he was concerned they were monsters. Twisted by the energy they so admired, the Acherons had barely been recognizable as people, and that made facing them down as easy as fighting a lurker. These people, though, with their foreign armor and utterly alien hierarchy, were undeniably people.

He wondered if he’d be able to fight another _person_.

One of the doors set into the metal wall slid open and together the two armored men roughly shoved Jak through, one with a hand between his shoulder blades and the other with one on the back of his head. He stumbled into the room, spinning to face his captors again; instead he saw the door slide shut, sealing him in.

Jak gave a sigh and looked around the room, dimly lit with red light. The door bore no visible handle or latch, of course, although there was a narrow slat installed just above his eye level, currently shut. Reaching up to fiddle with it proved that he wouldn’t be able to open it from this side, but he wasn’t worried. Compared to the Citadel, this was nothing—the floor wasn’t even moving. If he were there, Daxter would no doubt tell the Baron to work on his presentation.

The thought of his best friend made Jak feel a little steadier on his feet. Daxter was still out there, along with Samos and Keira. First things first: Jak had to figure out the easiest way out of this place and use it before the Baron could do anything to him. After that he would find Daxter, and from there they would find Keira and Samos together.

At that point, it seemed all too simple.

* * *

Although his voice had long ago turned ragged, the prisoner next door was still screaming. The sound was loud enough to cut through the metal walls and echo down the hall in distorted warbles and sobs; Jak couldn’t even imagine what they were doing to him to keep him so loud for so long. He reached up and covered his long ears for the third time in the last hour, bringing his knees up to his chest and clenching his eyes shut.

Jak had initially assumed that he had been captured as a means of gaining some kind of information, about the sages or Gol’s death or how they’d gotten here in the first place, but now it was obvious that when the Baron said he’d be talking soon enough, he wasn’t referring to any sort of conversation. They were going to make him scream.

Several more minutes passed before the cries faded at last and Jak let out a relieved sigh, as  much for himself as for the poor soul in the neighboring cell. He wondered how long one could manage to stay sane in this place, surrounded by screams and not knowing why, wondering when yours would join them.

He reached up to touch his throat, jaw tightening. He wouldn’t scream for them—couldn’t, really. Samos had explained long ago that either some accident in his youth or some error in his birth had left him incapable of making sound, for the most part. There had been years of green eco treatments in an attempt to repair the flaw in his larynx, but still it kept him from making more than the barest, shortest bursts of noise, quiet grunts of surprise and short, breathy yips of pain.

He remembered speaking, once, but couldn’t recall the circumstances clearly. It must have been before he came to live with his uncle, before his parents passed away. He remembered light and heat and dirt—or was it stone? Sand? With his eyes closed he could almost see it even now, those dark hands picking him up with a gentleness that belied their obvious strength. He whimpered then, properly, enough to strain his throat, and gave a short, loud cry of “No.”

The memory was vague at best, leaving Jak to often wonder if he’d dreamt it all up when he was a child, but the sheer uniqueness of it among all his other memories, the clear age of it, left him unable to let it go. And yet for all intents and purposes, Jak was mute; there was something wrong with him that left him nearly incapable of making sound.

There was no way to know what it was that struck him silent, but after a decade of regular treatments from Samos producing only the weakest of results—results which faded in time, leaving him completely voiceless for stretches between channeling sessions—he highly doubted that a little violence was going to change things. His last treatment with the old sage was directly after the fight on the Citadel, meaning he was certainly due for another and therefore as silent as he’d been the day he came to Sandover as a child.

Unless these people knew who it was that picked him up way back then, his first and most faded memory, and how it was that they had coaxed the word out of him in the first place, he wasn’t going to be talking to anyone any time soon.

Jak raked a hand through his green-to-gold hair, wrapping an arm around his legs and leaning his chin on his knees. This was hardly the best time to ruminate on nonsensical memories—he should have been thinking about how to get out of here, a task which seemed more unlikely all the time. He had spent the last three days looking for some weakness to this room, some bolt he could dislodge or floor plate he could upend to escape, but found nothing. He had assumed the cell would have been built with less intelligent beings in mind, lurkers and the like, considering they caused significantly more trouble than an actual person, but the last three days had proven that assumption incorrect. This cell was built to hold even the cleverest person prisoner for as long as possible.

A hydraulic hiss signaled the release of the lock, and Jak raised his head as the heavy metal door creaked open. Framed in the green light outside stood a man barely a hand’s width taller than Jak; after taking a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the shift in lighting, he realized that this was the man who had led the group that brought him in after his arrival in this strange place. Now that he had time to actually look at him Jak came to the conclusion that this man was nothing short of terrifying.

His skin was pale, paler than Jak had ever seen, and his face was covered in bizarre geometric tattoos of deep grey that trailed down past his thin fiery red eyebrows, over his eyes and cut sharp lines of color over the equally sharp line of his jaw. Jak had been able to see similar marks on the group that met him out on the street, the guards with the bright red goggles instead of the eerie black faceplate seen on the guards inside the facility, but at the time he’d thought they were just part of the helmet. Jak asked himself what kind of force left indelible marks in the skin of their soldiers—and what soldier would stand for it—but came to the realization that it implied a lifelong commitment. Did these soldiers not expect to survive long enough for the tattoos to matter?

The man in the doorway wore a uniform similar to the others’ in armor only, his breastplate and pauldrons the same bright red and ivory as the rest, bearing the same strange grey crest. It reminded Jak of a torch, but it was apparently a very _angry_ torch. The tight blue and yellow suit underneath the armor seemed entirely out of place, as did the bug-eyed helmet strapped to his head, vaguely reminiscent of the Precursor metal ornament Maia wore to keep her hair back.

But it wasn’t the armor, the eerie pallor of his skin or the gleaming gold of his eyes—which reminded Jak of the Haelum Cadier, the yellow sage back home—that made the young man so undeniably frightening, but rather the way he carried himself. He was distinctly undersized, his frame barely longer than Jak’s and his build even slimmer, but he carried himself with something more than just confidence. He stood with his shoulders back, feet shifting to stand shoulder-width apart in a motion that was obviously automatic, looking as if he were permanently tensed to lunge. If anything, he reminded Jak of an alliyote, the massive mottled beasts that roamed the woods surrounding the Citadel. This man was a predator.

“So you _are_ the new one,” he said in a clear, slightly-accented purr, bright yellow eyes narrowing as he looked Jak up and down. “I had a feeling this was where you’d end up—you’re not much to look at, but if the Baron’s right about you…well, I guess we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”

As if his position of power wasn’t already obvious from his carriage and modified uniform, the man made a quick gesture with his left hand and the two guards flanking him moved immediately moved forward to carry out the unspoken comment. They took hold of Jak around the arms, hauling him to his feet, but he just glared and pulled free in a quick rocking motion, standing straight on his own.

The man, whom Jak had decided was probably the captain of the guard for this strange place, chuckled. “Spry little thing.” He tilted his head ever so slightly to one side. “Going to walk on your own?”

Jak gave a single nod, clenching his hands into fists.

The captain nodded in reply. “All right, then.” He turned around and crossed his hands behind his back, looking back over his shoulder. “Walk.”

Jak followed, a guard on either side, silent as ever. They passed the cell where the man had been screaming earlier and Jak couldn’t help but wince slightly at the ragged breathing he could hear from within. Judging by the steadiness of those rough gasps, he had probably finally passed out; unconsciousness was a good escape from pain, possibly the only one he had.

The captain followed Jak’s line of sight. “Oh, don’t worry too much about that one,” he said with a dismissive wave of one gloved hand. “He’s not going to last much longer anyway. No talent for channeling at all.”

Jak’s brow furrowed. Channeling? He had always used the term in reference to eco, but who couldn’t channel eco to the point that it hurt? He knew some people had rejection issues with certain variations of the energy, but a complete inability to channel would make for a very difficult life indeed.

“Awfully quiet, aren’t you?”

Jak just shrugged as they turned a corner, eyes cast away from the captain in an attempt to look bored. For a moment he thought about making a break for it; it would be easy to drop down onto his hands and kick the legs out from under the guards on either side before attempting escape, but a glance at the captain left him unwilling to try, at least for the moment. This man was a warrior who, from the steely glint in his eyes, had clearly seen his fair share of battle. This was one of those rare occasions where Jak would have to bide his time and wait for the right opportunity to hit and run.

The small group moved through what had to be a large doorway, although the door itself was nowhere to be seen and the space left behind was large enough for two or three yakows to walk side by side. The lights in the room beyond were brighter and whiter than the low greens and yellows of the hall, bright enough that Jak winced and had to take a few seconds to adjust. He’d been in relative darkness for days, the transition—while welcome—was hardly painless.

When he could see clearly again, Jak found that the captain had stopped moving even though Jak himself hadn’t, so they now stood side by side. The redhead looked at the apparatus in the middle of the room appraisingly for a moment before his eyes slanted sideways toward Jak, probably waiting for his response.

At first glance it appeared to be nothing more than a simple metal chair, but further scrutiny proved otherwise. A few seconds of stillness to survey the device allowed Jak to notice metal restraints on the armrests and the legs, doubtless designed to strap down wrists and ankles. Above the chair hung a large metal disc covered with pinprick-sized holes, like the waterspout Keira used to clean his zoomer and her other machines but at least five times the size. The dimpled metal hung on the interior of a massive translucent cylinder—Jak had never seen so much glass in one place before, much less such a seamless structure.

The captain took a step forward, gesturing to the chair. “Have a seat.”

Jak held back, brow creasing as a thick aroma assailed his olfactory senses. His eyes narrowed at the familiarity of it, instantly reminded of Misty Island, Daxter, Gol and Maia, the fight on the Citadel—it all rushed back in a whirl of recollection with only a single common thread.

He looked back up to the giant waterspout, this time looking up past the glass cylinder and following the pipeline to its source. It bent, curled and came around to attach to a massive tank mounted over the door. Jak’s blood went cold as he stepped away from the tank, edging slightly closer to the chair as he recognized the surging, shimmering liquid inside. It flared violet and pink and gold, but overall the contents of the tank were black, black and reeking of electricity and stagnant air, of water left to sit too long and earth charred to infertility.

Where Keira’s spout had been connected to a tub of water, this one was connected to a tank of dark eco.

“Looks like you’ve figured it out,” the captain said, smirking slightly and making another gesture toward the chair. “You’re going to take a little shower, courtesy of the Baron.”

Jak looked at the tattooed man in shock. What could they possibly hope to accomplish by dousing him in dark eco? Where in the world had they gotten that much of the stuff in the first place? While it didn’t come close to the silo, the tank probably could have filled up the pool Daxter fell into back on Misty Island.

“Have a seat.” This time there was no pretense of pleasantry in the captain’s voice. When Jak didn’t move, the man sighed and perched his gloved hands on his hips. “If you would prefer, I can put you in the chair myself, but it won’t be nearly as pleasant.”

Jak found it hard to believe that any part of a process that led to being forcibly exposed to a rain of dark eco could be considered pleasant, and so squared his shoulders and set his jaw, silently daring the man to try. He had intended to bide his time, to wait and avoid as much confrontations here as possible, but he had no choice but to kick up this whumpbee’s nest now. The captain’s thin lips tightened and pulled back up into a smirk as he too straightened, popping the knuckles of one hand and taking a deep breath in preparation for the match.

The captain made a short gesture to the guards on either side of Jak, a momentary distraction that Jak attempted to take full advantage of by lunging first and throwing a hard swing toward the larger man’s head. The blow connected with open air as the captain ducked down in a sharp, almost eerily quick movement, one gloved hand coming up to circle Jak’s throat while the other struck out at his extended arm and cast the blow aside.

As it turned out, it wasn’t much of a match at all.


	2. The Crackle of Electricity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eco treatment number one. Here's where we start getting into the psuedoscience that is eco theory, which is going to stick around for the rest of the fic. If details on the physiological and psychological effects of different eco types and the various combinations thereof aren't your thing, then this may not be the fic for you. I do hope it's enjoyable, though!

Jak inhaled sharply as the two armored guards hoisted him to his feet and dropped him in the chair, removing his gloves and the wraps around his feet to properly fasten the restraints. The captain of the guard was the one to unbuckle and slide off the ring from his chest and carefully, almost gently slip off his goggles. He tilted them slightly in his hands, surveying the scarlet lens in the larger left ocular with vague curiosity before dropping both them and the ring into the growing pile of Jak’s things.

“I’m afraid the technicians are busy with other subjects today,” the captain said, not even winded after the fight that left Jak’s head swimming—had he cracked it on the floor? He knew the man threw him down with a sort of trained ease Jak had never seen, but he couldn’t quite recall exactly how much damage he’d done or how. “So you’ll have to make due with me as your handler for the time being.” He tilted his head slightly and nodded for one of the guards to come forward. “Get it off, it could impede the absorption process.”

The guard nodded and drew a knife from a sheath on his thigh, slicing open Jak’s tunic in the front, shoulders and sides in order to pull it off in sections. Jak’s immediate thought was that it was a very sharp knife and he could probably use one, though with the pain still pounding in his head and starts lit behind his eyes he wasn’t exactly sure how. It wasn’t as if he’d ever used a real weapon before outside hunting expeditions around the village, he wouldn’t know the first thing to do with a knife that sharp. Maybe it would be sharp enough to make up for his lack of skill.

All three armored men stepped back, the scraps of Jak’s tunic tossed into the pile with the rest of his belongings, leaving him in just his tattered breeches. The chair, and the shackles attached to it, were extremely cold, with periodic breaks in the chill where the color and texture of the metal changed in an odd, almost organic veinwork that he had only barely noticed upon seeing the strange apparatus.

Green flared at the base of the chair and Jak instantly felt his head clear, pain ebbing away as an all too familiar taste clung to the back of his mouth. Like chewing mint leaves or inhaling hard after cutting grass, like the jungle right after rain, Jak would recognize green eco anywhere. Shifting around in an attempt to see the source of the light, Jak found the legs of the chair set into deep indentations in the floor; the rich emerald glow emanating from below slowly worked its way up the off-color veining set into the metal, turning the grey-brown bright green.

Jak realized that the strange patterns in the seat had to be made of wood, like wiring crafted out of the circulatory system of a tree. The vein-like pattern tightened and flared along just the right contours to follow the curves and angles of his body, channeling the green eco into his legs, his arms, his back, anywhere his skin made contact. The process was vaguely reminiscent of his treatments with Samos, but why would they be treating him with green eco if they were intending to douse him in dark?

Jak’s stomach lurched, the reason hitting him like a blow to the face. They were going to shower him in dark eco. That was literally the entire reason for the introduction of the green to his system. With the green eco constantly circulating, assuming the concentration of dark eco was low enough, anyone with decent channeling ability would survive a few minutes under the spout. For Jak, considering his gift for channeling, there was no telling what the result would be—just that he would definitely live to see it.

He wished fleetingly that he hadn’t learned so much about from Samos; it would have been better, he thought, to be horrified without such a clear understanding of just how much trouble he was in. Maybe then, when he survived and woke up Precursors only knew how long from now, he would feel a sense of triumph. Instead, dread already began welling up from the pit of his stomach, cold in his chest and in the tips of his fingers.

Was this anything like what Gol and Maia had done to themselves?

Jak didn’t have any more time to wonder when the captain’s voice cut through his fear with a clear, accented command: “Bring it down.”

The glass cylinder over Jak’s head descended over him, fitting into an indentation on the floor that he hadn’t noticed before; the tube was much larger than Jak had thought, set into the ceiling above, and when the familiar hiss of hydraulics set to work bringing up a rubber seal on either side of the glass it was made clear that this was designed as a containment unit. Another hiss, slightly more distant, signaled that the same had happened above where the glass met the ceiling.

He could still see the captain moving about the room, gesturing periodically to his guards and obviously giving orders in time, but the glass was too thick and his voice too low for Jak to hear. The man hovered over a panel for several seconds, hands moving from one glowing dial to the next while he periodically glanced over his shoulder, looking at the tank, the waterspout, and periodically at Jak. Then he stopped and turned around, leaving his hand on a large green button on the panel even as he met Jak’s eyes.

While he couldn’t be sure, Jak thought it looked like the man said “hold your breath” before pressing down on the glowing switch without breaking eye contact. Instantly Jak could hear a low hum from the device suspended above him, the sound of fluid rushing through pipes—a sound Jak had only ever heard so loudly in conjunction with irrigation—reaching his pointed ears. He set his jaw and clenched his eyes shut as the sound grew louder, drawing nearer and nearer.

Then it began to rain.

The green eco around him flared the instant the dark made contact; reflexively he threw his head back, eyes wide and frenzied, mouth open wide and breath heaving in near-silence, looking for all the world like he was drowning for the first several seconds the liquid flowed over his bare skin.

It burned and froze, tasted like electricity and death and light, smelled like blood and destruction and power— _so much power_ —but just as soon as Jak registered the rush through his system the green doused the dark and the pain and power faded, only to repeat the process. Burn, freeze, light, death, blood— _power_. It sent a shudder through him, making him arch his back and gasp, his senses flashing to a level of clarity he had never felt before, only to douse it once more as the green eco went to work.

The process repeated, again and again and again, every heartbeat both pushing him deeper into the power-induced seizure and pulling him back out. The sensation was better than anything he had ever felt before, it was perfect, it was forever. It was pain like nothing he’d ever imagined, tearing a silent scream from his throat.

He didn’t see the captain smile as he watched.

* * *

Jak came to lying supine on a hard, flat surface. His hazy memory offered no assistance in explaining when he had been moved or where he was, and the low, constant pain burning in every inch of his body kept him from opening his eyes just yet. Even so, he know that he wasn’t alone when voices—both familiar and beyond his ability to place—drifted into his perception, barely audible over the ringing in his skull.

“All that and nothing?” The voice was deep, aged just to the edge of ragged.

The response was higher, smoother, more recent in Jak’s memory. The accent was still strange, somewhere between familiar and foreign. “No noticeable changes, no adverse side effects beyond the most minimal of those expected.”

“He’s a true channeler, then, as promised.”

“It would appear so.” Here there was a pause. “He barely made a sound through the entire treatment.”

Jak opened one eye and tilted his head to the side, wincing as the pressure of his body on the table shifted to bring the metal into contact with new points on his skin. His skin felt worse than after his first encounter with the Fire Canyon as a child; back then he had gone against the advice of his elders and been scalded by the superheated air, leaving his entire body had red for weeks. Samos couldn’t risk exacerbating the issue by introducing the energetic pulse of eco to his system, green or otherwise, and so even the slightest brush against his reddened skin had been enough to bring tears of pain to his eyes. This felt worse.

He ground his teeth and tried to lay completely still, his open eye slowly drifting into focus. He was just starting to put together where he was, and with whom, when a giant of a man stepped into his line of vision, obscuring the blur of blue and yellow and red and bright fiery orange Jak had been trying to decipher into a clear visual image.

It was Baron Praxis. The name rose easily to the surface of Jak’s memory now that he could finally see him. Jak found the title interesting, mostly because Samos had told him stories about kings and barons and counts as a child, but had been expressly clear that the titles weren’t actually legitimate for the world in which they lived. If there was a baron here, maybe he was in another world,

Regardless, whoever or whatever Praxis was, he remained disturbingly calm as he leaned over the wounded youth with his teeth barely visible through a sliver of a grin. “Awake already?”

Jak remained still, staring through the Baron with his open eye, determined not to respond; then the man straightened, raising one hand, and a fingernail scraped slowly along Jak’s forehead. He clenched his eyes shut again and tensed, breath ragged through clenched teeth.

After an excruciatingly long second Praxis withdrew, the pain slowly fading as Jak to let out a long and nearly silent sigh of relief.

Praxis’ eye narrowed. “Still quiet,” he murmured, obviously displeased. “Are you really that stubborn, boy?”

It took everything Jak had to open his eyes and look directly at the Baron again, shifting ever so slightly to help ease his breathing. He forced his mouth into a tight, slanted smile, eyes narrowing in challenge.

The two stared each other down for a long moment, before Praxis made a low sound of aggravation and turned back to the captain. Jak felt a swell of triumph that the Baron had turned away first. At this point, he would take any victory he could get.

“Run a full battery of tests,” Praxis ordered, “and do what you have to do to figure out how to utilize him properly.” Jak couldn't’ see what the redhead did, but Praxis’ next words made it clear that he had been preparing to question the command. “Yes, Erol, _you_. If he’s really the only true channeler we have, I want you as his lead handler, either until he’s fully operational or needs to be scrapped. I’ll be back to check on him next week.”

“Yes, Baron.” The captain, Erol, replied with a hunt of frustration in his silky voice.

Praxis stepped past the captain of his guard with loud, limping footsteps and without another word. Jak heard the door close behind him, leaving him alone with Erol.

It made Jak’s skin crawl a little when the man’s yellow eyes worked their way up and down his body, from head to toe and back, and then the man’s expression brightened slightly. The smile on his face utterly failed to reach his narrowed eyes.

“It looks like we’re going to be spending some quality time together, I suppose.” His eyebrows slanted downward. “I do hope you’re not as disappointing as your predecessor.”

* * *

To put it plainly, Jak felt like shit. Although profanity had always been Daxter’s job, this went beyond the descriptive capacity of terms like “uncomfortable” and “miserable.” His joints ached and the back of his throat tasted like melted sugar and aluminum almost constantly these days; it had been less than an hour since his last shower, so at the moment his eyes had yet to fully recover from the low burning sensation that lit his retinas when the treatments started.

According to Erol, he would be changing treatment types soon. _“The other subjects have started dying off much more quickly of late,”_ he had said, filling out paperwork as he had Jak hauled out of bed for his most recent treatment. _“But you’re still here, fit as a fiddle.”_ Here he had paused and chuckled a little. _“Well, within reason. Regardless, it’s about time you diversified, don’t you think?”_

The very thought of other options existing made him sick to his stomach. He had been limited to the shower for some time—it felt like it must have been months, how many was entirely unknown—but according to his so-called “handler” he would be moved to a new section of the facility today for a variation on the overall theme of this horrible project. Erol was right, he had been holding up remarkably well to the treatments; all the skin on his body didn’t burn right after a shower anymore, and he rarely if ever passed out, but it still _hurt_.

And yet, the pain wasn’t even the worst part. On occasion Jak would find himself almost looking forward to his next treatment, subconsciously hoping that it would be soon so he could feel that surge of power again. He had learned early on just how addictive the positive sensations brought about by dark eco could be, and although he struggled to retain his stability in the face of repeated and constant exposure to the stuff, he was beginning to understand just what it had done to Gol and Maia. If he could control the power the eco gave him, he was certain that he would feel like nothing less than a god.

Was that why Gol had gone to such lengths for his research? The youngest sage had been driven to the point of insanity, and in the end it brought about nothing but his own destruction. Had he grown so addicted to the power that dark eco granted him, if only in flashes and fragments, that he sought to control it completely? How long had he been experimenting on himself and his sister before Jak’s path crossed with theirs? Jak spent a lot of time thinking about Gol and Maia these days. Considering the circumstances, he really couldn’t help it.

When he forced himself to put thoughts of the corrupted sage and his twisted sister out of his mind, however, he instead found himself wondering if an attempt to harness dark eco had wiped the Precursors from the face of the planet in the days before history began. It would explain the sheer volume of dark eco that existed, the opens wells and exposed pools, not to mention the massive silos, both buried and towering high over the ruins far north of Sandover.

The hydraulic hiss of the door made Jak raise his head, reaching up to brush back and errant lock of green and blond hair. It had grown out quite a bit since his capture, now long enough to brush his shoulders when he moved and considerably messier than he was comfortable with. He wished that these people would cut his hair, give him back just the strap from his goggles to keep his hair of his face, do anything something to make at least one facet of his living hell a little more livable. He wasn’t by any means expecting them to make him comfortable, but the constant itching and pinpricks of hair against his overly sensitive skin could very well be responsible for sending him over the deep end before any of the eco treatments did.

Erol looked down at him, watching almost too intently as Jak raked a dirty hand through his hair, and smiled ever so slightly. “So,” he all but purred, “how is the Baron’s favorite strong silent type doing today?”

Jak just glared up at him for all he was worth, lips sealed tight. Not that it would matter, considering how long it had been since the last time he was administered one of Samos’ green eco treatments he was well and completely back to silence, unable to make even a hint of sound no matter how he tried.

“We got back some of your tests from the lab today,” the man continued, voice dipping into a hiss that Jak had long ago come to recognize. “They tell me that there are some issues with your vocal folds. Your vocal muscles are completely atrophied; how did that happen?”

Jak just shrugged dismissively, leaning back against the wall at the head of his bed and looking away in what he hoped appeared to be boredom. The taste of sweetness and metal in the back of his throat spread through his mouth.

Erol tilted his head. “So all this time we’ve thought you were holding your tongue, playing it tough, when actually—” Jak clenched his jaw in preparation for what he knew was coming. “—you’re _dumb_?”

Until recently, there were very few things that Jak outright hated: that word sat squarely at the top of the list. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t make a sound without regular maintenance and it definitely wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t speak at all. There was no reason to describe his condition using a term that had long ago come to be synonymous with “stupid.” His inability to speak didn’t mean he couldn’t communicate, after all. Daxter, Keira, Samos and the villagers of Sandover understood him perfectly well.

Erol came closer, leaning over the young man and folding his arms over his armored chest. “Ooh, it looks like I touched on a nerve.” His smile flashed those eerily white teeth. “Don’t like being called dumb? Perhaps if you tried speaking up now and then, people wouldn’t assume—”

Jak ground his teeth and something flared in his chest, bringing up a surge of strength he hadn’t been expecting and a flare of rage he hadn’t realized he was holding back. He lunged up from his cot to tackle Erol, swinging at him with one hand. Electricity crackled behind his teeth and purple flared in his eyes, blinding him for an instant as the rage took control.

The air tasted like burnt sweets and lightning.

Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the bubble of strength in his core seemed to burst. The captain of the guard almost threw him off almost effortlessly, slamming a knee into his midsection as he rose and turning his foot to kick the youth in face as soon as he hit the floor.

He stayed there, breathing air that tasted like copper and pain. There were sure to be bruises, no amount of green eco would be able to heal away injuries inflicted so soon after bodily trauma as severe as hist recent dark eco shower, and he didn’t want to think about the abrasions that would go with them. His third treatment had been performed after a similar scuffle, but he had been unconscious for a full two days after the slick violet-black liquid came in contact with the breaks in his skin. He could only assume direct contact with his bloodstream or something equally unpleasant was to blame.

Erol glared down at him, running a gloved hand over his cheek where Jak was more than mildly surprised to see not a bruise, but rather claw marks marring the man’s grey-tattooed features. The wounds were sharp and fine, like a wild cat had struck at his face. He brought his hand down and stared at the sticky fluid on his glove for a long moment, redder than his hair, redder than the armor on his chest.

He reached down to grab Jak with the bloodied hand, leaving a streak on the worn prison tunic almost as bright as the streak across his face. “Thank you for reminding me why we keep you around, boy,” he hissed through clenched teeth, yellow eyes narrowed and almost frenzied with some mingling of pain and fury. “Come on, we have something special for you today.”


End file.
